Friday, 30 May 2014

The problem of gaining and preserving freedom of access to
crags and mountains is becoming acute in certain areas. Where access itself is
unrestricted, mountaineers may still find their freedom threatened by increasing
interference from sundry officials. In the United States, control over
climbers’ movements is in some areas already a common occurrence. In this
article an historic mountain incident is recalled, one whose lessons are no
less valid today. Kinder Scout is the wild heart of the Derbyshire Peak District:
it is the final Southerly clench of the backbone of England.

On every side of this area of ‘outstanding natural beauty’ industrial
towns bristle. For the millions in the conurbations of Manchester, Sheffield and
the West Riding, a short road or train journey brings these moorland fastnesses
within reach. ‘The Manchester Rambler’ can be up and away before his Southern
counterpart has reached the station. In 1932, although these moors lay on the
doorsteps of many who considered them their birthright, they were owned by a
handful of landlords, who had reserved these unrivaled acres for their own
private enjoyment. A few score of very wealthy ‘sportsmen’ spent the autumn
months slaughtering the grouse that flourish there. The local record for one
day was 1,421 brace, shot by nine guns over the Broomhead Moors in August 1913.
To make such carnage possible the people were excluded not only during the nesting
and shooting seasons but throughout the whole year

In 1932, P. A. Barnes, author of Trespassers will be Prosecuted,
a famous pamphlet campaigning for free access, wrote: "Throughout the
moorland areas in and adjacent to the Peak District (about 215 square miles)
there are only about twelve footpaths." Ramblers and climbers were affronted
by "Keep Out" signs everywhere, and small private armies of gamekeepers
patrolled their masters’ estates with forelock-touching earnestness.

There is a long tradition of moorland walking among Manchester
and Sheffield workers. At this time, tens of thousands of young people would
hike from tram termini each weekend, bound for the Peak. As the dole queues lengthened,
more and more turned to rambling as one of the few sporting activities they
could afford. In 1932, there were 66,000 unemployed in Sheffield. At a time
when many were questioning the institutions and ideology of capitalism, the
almost feudal restrictions on access to the moors were an intolerable outrage. Confrontations
with gamekeepers became more frequent and more violent. Obviously working to
instructions from the landlords, moorland patrols increased their vigilance,
and the indignation of the ramblers escalated apace. As early as 1923 the
Manchester Evening Chronicle had contained an amazing Wild West style
"wanted" notice. It showed two photographs of walkers on Kinder
Scout, and underneath it read: "Kinder Scout Trespassers, £5 reward will
be paid for the name, address and occupation of any of the persons represented
in the photos. Apply Cobbett, Wheeler 8 Cobbett, Solicitors, 49 Spring Gardens,
Manchester”. Grandfather William Cobbett, the early nineteenth century radical,
must have been squirming in his grave at the role his offspring were playing.

The "Access to Mountains Bill" was first brought
before the House of Commons in 1888, but its main clause, stating that " .
. . no owner or occupier of uncultivated mountains or moorland shall be
entitled to exclude any person from walking or being on such land for the
purpose of recreation or artistic study, or to molest him in sowalking or being," caused apoplexy among
the predominantly Tory members. Successive attempts were backed up outside
Parliament by the Ramblers’ Federation and the Footpaths Preservation Society,
whose campaigning went no further than polite petitioning and the holding of an
annual rally at which ramblers were merely asked to support the actions of
M.P.s and officials. By and large the predominantly middle-class leadership of
these ‘responsible’ bodies looked with some alarm at the increasingly bitter
clashes between keepers and working class ramblers.

In fact the idea of a ‘mass trespass’ seems to have first arisen
at one of the camps organized by the British Workers’ Sports Federation, held
at the village of Rowarth in 1931. This organization had been set up on the
initiative and under the influence of the Young Communist League, the Communist
Party Youth Movement, and it presented the question of access to the hills in
open class terms. A ramble from the camp, led by Benny Rothman, thesecretary of
the Lancashire Federation of the B.W.S.F (and now a Trade Union Convener in a
Manchester Engineering Factory), who more than anyone can claim to have been
the organizer of the mass trespass, was turned back by the keepers before the
objective, Bleaklow Hill, had been reached. New plans were laid during the
bitter and angry hike back.

Rothman visited the Manchester Evening News on April 18th,
1932 and gave an interview to a reporter (who was later used as a witness by
the prosecution that had Rothman convicted for his part in the events), and
next day the plans were headline news: "Mass Trespass over Kinder
Scout", with suitably lurid references to "shock troops" and
"assaults”. The Sheffield Ramblers’ Federation made its position quite
clear: "We have nothing whatsoever to do with this demonstration of which
we thoroughly disapprove. We do not consider these people to be bona fide
ramblers." Those damn Reds even get under the heather.

Unemployed like at least half of those taking part, Rothman and
a friend cycled to Hayfield early in the morning of Sunday April 24th, the day of
the trespass, to reconnoitre the proposed route. Had he been able to afford the
train fare he would have been stopped at the station by the police with an
injunction restraining him from taking part in the meeting at Hayfield Recreation
Ground with which the demonstration had been advertised to start. Rothman estimated
that the sunken playing field was a natural trap, and that the one-third of the
full Derbyshire Police Force present in the village intended the meeting to be
the start and finish of the day's proceedings. Word was immediately passed to
the assembling ramblers to set off at once along the footpath to William's
Clough, and the high moors beyond. Police desperately ran along the column to
try and head it off, but they were too late. Unused to such exercise, a
contingent of perspiring bobbies fell in at the rear.

The delayed meeting was held in a disused quarry amphitheatre
beside the path. Rothman scrambled on to a boulder and spoke to the crowd, now
numbering about 600. He emphasized that they wanted an orderly and disciplined march.
"Our grouse is against grouse", he said, "we are determined to
trespass en masse everywhere where we canclaim with justice to have a right to
go." The crowd of young people wheeled eastward out of William's Clough,
striking up the hillside towards the forbidden crest of Kinder. Spontaneously
this unorganised and picturesque demonstration adopted self-protective tactics
to prevent any arrests by the following police. At each stile the entire march
would halt and only proceed when the last straggler was safely through.

The keepers had anticipated this route and were waiting on
the crest. What followed has passed into legend. A dozen or so keepers and
specially enrolled villagers raised their cudgels. From the press reports one
could be forgiven for assuming they were describing ‘going over the top’ in a First
World War battle. The most ‘accurate’ of them was the Sheffield Independent:
"Over the rough moorland men struggled and rolled down the steep slopes.
Every minute it appeared that somebody would hurtle to the bottom." in
fact a few brief scuffles were all that were needed to brush the keepers aside.
One of them, Edward Beever, was injured, the occasion for later charges of
grievous bodily harm.

The ramblers had reached the summit plateau, sacred ground
from which they had hitherto been officially excluded. A contingent from
Sheffield who had 'trespassed’ from Edale joined them for a victory meeting.
They brought news that the roads to the east were lined with police, and it was
decided to return by the same route. As they marched back the hills echoed to
shouts of ”Down with the landlords and ruling class". At Hayfield a line
of police awaited them. Five ramblers were arrested and variously charged with
unlawful assembly and committing a breach of the peace. ‘Trespass’ was not amongst
the charges. The law had long since been repealed l The day's events were
headline news, as were the trials of those arrested. Rothman conducted his own
defence on what amounted to the political platform of the British Workers’
Sports Federation, but politics were brought into the case by the prosecution
too.

Much was made of a copy of the Communist Review found on one of the
defendants, and the sinister discovery of a pamphlet by a "Mr. Lenin"
was emphasized. "ls that the Russian gentleman ?” asked the learned judge.
Five of those on trial were members of the Young Communist League, and
according to the Progressive Rambler, a magazine of the time, the jury consisted
of "two Brigadier Generals, three Colonels, two Majors, three Captains,
two Aldermen - and eleven of these were country gentlemen" Sentences
ranged from two tosix months, with one dismissal.

Mr. Stephen Morton, secretary of the Sheffield Ramblers’ Federation,
was quoted as saying: "For many years we have been endeavouring to obtain
access to mountains and moorlands by legitimate means. This move, on the part
of the Lancashire people, would throw the whole thing back at least twenty
years.” The opposite was the case. The mass trespass gained the cause of free
access to mountains more sympathetic publicity in one day than the Ramblers’
Federation had won for it in the previous thirty years.

Demonstrations of solidarity
with those jailed, and the organization of other trespasses, such as the ‘Abbey
Brook’ march in September of the same year, carried forward the tempo of the
movement. Many more battles were necessary before the Access to Mountains Bill
was finally put on the Statute Book by Atlee’s Labour Government, but it was
"The Battle for Kinder Scout" that lifted the movement from the level
of private members’ lobbying to that of mass politics. Its memory still echoes
whenever the right to ramble or climb is threatened.

Friday, 23 May 2014

FROM the Jungfrau on Friday, the 8th July, A terrible
disaster was reported. Two tourists, Alfred Kuhn, of Strassburg, aged about
45, and Hans Harthold, of Saarbrucken, about 35, set out on the 8th July to
climb the Jungfrau, or at any rate to go from the Bergli hut over the Monchjoch
to the Concordia hut. They were accompanied by the guides, Alexander Burgener, father,
his sons, Adolf and Alois, and the Grindelwalder, Fritz Brawand. They were
joined at the Station Eisrneer by the guides Peter lnabnit, and his nephew,
Rudolf Inabnit. At the place where the disaster occurred they met guide Bohren;
who was preparing the path for those approaching the Bergli hut. Independently
of this column there came, only a little behind, the guides Christian and Fritz
Bohren, Bleuer and Kaufrnarm, who were carrying provisions to the Bergli hut.

Both the tourists, Kiihn and Harthold, as well as the guides
Alexander and Alois Burgener, the old Bohren and the two Inabnits perished;
Brawand and Alois Burgener are seriously injured. We publish from the N Zurich
Zeitung the following particulars as to the circumstances of the disaster.
Christian Bohren, the son, narrated to a reporter as follows.....

" We four, my
brother Fritz and I, Bleuer and Kaufmann, had set out on Friday from
Grindelwald and the Station Eismeer for the Bergli hut. We two wanted to bring
provisions to our father, who is hut-keeper at the Concordia, and Kaufmann and
Bleuer also to the Bergli hut-keeper Kaufmann.The weather was fine. We went
roped, and made good progress. We must have been still a good hour off the Bergli,
to which meanwhile a caravan, eight men strong, had approached within about ten
minutes’ distance. A man was making a track down from the hut for the
new-comers. That was our father, who then joined the foremost caravan. Then a
mass of snow appeared suddenly to split off, just at the spot where the caravan
found itself, or, speaking exactly, a little above it. On the Bergli rocks the
mass divided itself; one arm drove straight down; all the foremost caravan disappeared
with it. The left arm took a direction straight for us. We dived into the ice-wall
of the Bergli rocks, and made ourselves as small as possible, hoping that the
avalanche would go clear over us. But it seized us, tore us away with it, and
whirled us downwards, so that we no longer knew who was foremost and who last.
So it went on-on. A sharp jerk; we were fixed. I found myself on my feet right
in front of a crevasse, up to my breast in snow.

Bleuer stuck fast on my right,
also up to the breast in snow. My brother Fritz lay in a crevasse, buried up to
the head. Kaufmann hung over a ‘Gletschertiissel ’ on the rope. Bleuer and I worked
ourselves out, and released my brother Fritz, who was unconscious; the too
tightly drawn rope had robbed him of his breath. Kaufmann had meanwhile unroped
himself, and sprung clear. We then drew him up again over the ‘Tussel.’ All
this did not pass so quickly as I have told it you. The avalanche had surprised
us at six in the evening; the work lasted quite three-quarters of an hour. As
soon as we were again together, and had inspected the damage, we turned back to
our track.

We soon met a rescue column that was coming from the Eismeer; we let
them go on further to the head-caravan, and set out alone on the way to the
Station Eismeer. We arrived there at half-past eight. We reached Grindelwald
this morning. We know moreover that the Bergli hut-keeper, Kaufmann, had just
begun to get ready something’ hot for the arriving guests as the avalanche
fell.

The disaster had already happened when he stepped out. He took
a good mouthful of brandy, and then climbed down to render assistance. He found
three still living-Rudolf lnabnit, Fritz Brawand and the son of Alexander
Burgener. The other six were dead, and frightfully disfigured. Kaufmann helped,
and made such arrangements as he could. Then the above-mentioned rescue column from
the Station Eismeer arrived to recover the injured. The son Burgener had a huge
hole in the head; one eye is lost. Brawand had his head split; Inabnit, amongst
other injuries, a compound fracture of the leg. The leg only just hung on him
by the skin, so that he wanted to cut it away; only the strength to do it
failed him. On the way to the Eismeer he also, poor fellow, was released from
his sufferings through death.

About midnight the rescue column, with the two injured and
the dead man, reached the Station Eismeer. Brawand and Burgener (son) were taken
as quickly as possible to Interlaken.”

So far Christian Bohrens’ simple narrative.... Quietly did he
relate it, a worthy son of the mountains. But nevertheless it will overcome
him. All Grindelwald knows that now, at about eight o’clock, the dead are
coming in, and Christians' father is amongst them. The same reporter added the
following particulars; Alexander Burgener, father, was valued as a guide of the very
first rank. He was a powerfully built, weather-beaten man, for many years
familiar with the dangers of the high Alps. Whoever went with him might feel
himself secure. To add to the security of the party, the two climbers wanted
also to take with them the experienced old Grindelwalder, Rudolf Baumann. He
had, however, shortly before met with a slight mishap, and had to call off. In
his place went the young Fritz Brawaud. The snow must, however, already, near
the Station Eismeer, have proved to be in a very treacherous condition, for the
caravan was there augmented by the two Inabnits, uncle and nephew. The two went
in front, and, as the lighter members of the company, helped to make a track.

Thus the party pushed forward up to a short distance from the
Bergli hut, whence Christian Bohren, father, always ready to help, was making a
track for the caravan. Then the snow began to move. Whether the making of the
track gave the first impulse to it remains undecided. Certain it is, that the coating
of new snow, softened by sun and ‘Fohnwind,’ adhering badly to the older snow underneath,
no longer held firm, but began slowly to slide away. The place of fracture is
as high as a man. The break occurred at a trifling distance from the hut,
extended over the whole wall, and detached portions of snow that, so to say,
hung near the hut, fell with it. This new snow, that in the last fourteen days
had fallen in great masses, gave way at the point of contact with the old hardened
snow. Thus it shot away, as if torn off by a giant’s grip, dragging with it the
great caravan on the far side of the Bergli, whilst a smaller arm went down in
front, and there, as already described, surprised a column of porters four
strong.

At the place where the avalanche tore away with it the big caravan,
points of rocks everywhere project upwards. Down over these rocks, more than
200 metres deep, the nine were hurled, until they came to rest in a hollow.
They were,found almost on the surface, buried only a few inches, with the
exception of one who stuck up to his armpits in snow. The hut-keeper, Kaufmann,
an old Caucasus guide, after the thunder (of the avalanche), climbed down with
incredible rapidity. But also someone at the Station Eismeer, with Zeiss-glasses,
had observed the occurrence, and at once directed the three available men to
the scene of the disaster. Director Liechti, of the Jungfrau Railway, did still
more, for he sent up from the Station Eigergletscher forty men from the staff‘
of guards and engineers that they might, from the Eismeer at least, recover the
wounded.

We know already that this rescue work, carried on by acetelyne light
under the most difficult conditions, lasted up till midnight. The rescue work
was brought to an end on Saturday by a party of Grindelwald guides. That was a
difficult bit of work. Over the windows of the Jungfrau Railway, too, masses of
snow broke away incessantly into the valley. However, the labour ended without
fresh sacrifice of life.”

Translated from Alpina 5th July, 1910.

The Alpina appeals for help on behalf of the widows and
children of the victims of this unheard-of catastrophe. Peter Inalbnit leaves a
widow and ten children, the eldest only I7;an eleventh child is expected.
Christian Bohren leaves a widow and children, with little property. Rudolf Inalbnit
was the mainstay of his parents. Donations may be sent to Pfarrer Gottfried Strasser,
S.A.C., Grindelwald, or The Editor, Dr. E. Walder, Bergstrasse I37, Zurich.

First published as ‘the Catastrophe near the Bergli club
Hut, 8th July 1910.

Friday, 16 May 2014

Shortly after midday on Sunday 1st August 1802, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge strode down the hill from Greta Hall, his Keswick home, a knapsack
over one shoulder and a broom-handle for a walking-stick, at the start of a
nine-day walk around the Lake District. On Sunday 13th August 1989 - 187 years
and 12 days later I set off from the same spot to follow, as closely as
possible, in his footsteps. Like Coleridge, I walked alone. Like him, I did not
book accommodation ahead but advanced hopefully, trusting that I would find
somewhere to lay my head each evening. I tried to do the journey in his daily
stages, and succeeded – up to a point.

The ‘footsteps’ form has become a
popular one with writers. In the summer of 1964 Richard Holmes followed the route through the Cevennes that
Robert Louis Stevenson had walked, with his recalcitrant donkey, 86 years
before. Bernard Levin traced Hannibal’s path across southern France and over the
Alps to produce a book and a television series made memorable by his ‘Big White
Carstairs’ tropical shorts. Others, for various motives, have tracked the
evangelising journeys of St Paul, the road to Canterbury that Chaucer’s
pilgrims took,the trail that John Muir blazed across the Sierra Nevada of California.
At least two writers - Geoffrey Moorhouse and Beryl Bainbridge - have toured
the places that J. B. Priestley visited on his English journey, published in
1934, to update his report on the state of the nation.

My aim was different
from any of theirs. The idea was to look out for all the things that Coleridge
noted on his walk that are still to be seen, virtually unchanged; also the
things he sawwhich are no longer there, and the things that are there now but were
not when he passed by; and, in this way, to try to form some picture of what
has happened to this unique corner of England in the intervening years. So this
is an account of three journeys: the one that Coleridge made, which was an
exploration and an escape; the one I made, which was more of an investigation;
and the long, complex journey that the Lake District has made in almost two
centuries.

Luckily, much is known about Coleridge’s walk. He carried a
small notebook and stopped frequently to jot down, while they were still fresh
in his mind, all his observations and adventures, the feelings they inspired,
the responses they aroused in that teeming and tireless mind. He then used
these notes to form the basis of long, vivid and more literary letters that he
wrote to the woman he had fallen guiltily in love with, Sara Hutchinson. These
primary sources have survived almost intact and, thanks to assiduous modern
scholarship - much of it North American -they are available in published form. Coleridge,
who enjoyed coining new words, called his waik a ‘circumcursion’.

He ended where
he started. His route followed a wavering but roughly circular course,
anti-clockwise in direction, well over 100 miles in distance, involving the
ascent and descent of more than 10,000 vertical feet, often on steep and stony
ground. He saw all the higher mountains of the Lake District and most of its
lakes and valleys, though he missed out Ullswater and Hawes Water and the
eastern fells. He passed through three counties, for at that time - and for a
further 170 years, until the county boundaries were redrawn - Keswick was in Cumberland, Coniston was
in North Lancashire, Rydal and Grasmere were in Westmorland. He touched the
shore of the Irish Sea at St Bees. He rested and wrote part of a letter on the
summit of Scafell, the second highest point of land in England. Descending from
there, he took a short cut that involved him in the first recorded rock-climb
ever made in this country.

Mountains were still seen as dangerous and repellent
places, treacherous and profitless. Even William Wordsworth, a Lake District man
by birth and upbringing and a powerful pedestrian, hired a local guide when he
wanted to go to the summit of Scafell Pike. Coleridge’s achievement is all the
more remarkable in the light of his condition and circumstances. These could
hardly have been more discouraging. He was nearly 30 years old and had long suffered
from a variety of physical complaints, most notably rheumatism. To suppress the
pain he had been taking ever-increasing doses of laudanum, a tincture of opium and
alcohol. By 1802, according to most accounts, he was addicted.

He was a married man with two young sons and a third child
on the way. But the marriage was in trouble. His love for Sara Hutchinson, at
odds with his strong belief in the sanctity of Christian marriage, tormented
him with guilt. The household, which was sometimes awakened in the middle of
the night by his drug-induced nightmare screams, was often shattered during the
day by fierce connubial shouting matches. In addition, the power of poetic
creation, which he prized above all else, seemed to have deserted him. And this
at a time when Wordsworth was writing more prolifically and more powerfully
than ever. His long walk gave Coleridge
an escape from all these problems and pressures.

The urge to escape has rarely been given the
recognition it deserves as a motivating force among those who go off on adventurous
expeditions. When they come to write it up afterwards, as they frequently do, these
people - explorers, mountaineers, lone navigators - tend to play that aspect
down, presumably because they do not want to further upset the loved ones left
behind at home. So we read much about the call of the wilderness, the spirit of
adventure and man’s instinct to explore. But man’s instinct to escape is also
powerful, and has been intensified perhaps by the crowded conditions, rigid
routines and nagging anxieties of modern life. It was the relatively new urban,
industrialised society in Britain and Germany in the mid-nineteenth century that
produced adventure sports .It is hard, nowadays, to appreciate the sheer
boldness of his undertaking. It was a journey without precedent. No one before
him, and no one but Coleridge in his time, dreamt of walking over and among the
high fells, alone, in all weathers, getting off the shepherds’ tracks, for the
sheer fun of it, mountaineering and rock-climbing, pot-holing and small boat sailing.

Greta Hall: Keswick

The idea of breaking out and ‘getting away from it all’ is perennially
attractive. Nothing is more liberating and enlivening - for a while. Coleridge
had always been a natural escaper. As a child he escaped into books and solitary
reveries. When he ran into trouble at Cambridge he bolted to enlist as a
trooper in a cavalry regiment. As a husband, even in the first happy years of
the marriage, he was rarely at home at times of crisis. He could always find
reasons for his derelictions, but the pattern was repeated too often for them
to carry conviction.

In the summer of 1802 he certainly had much to want to escape
from, and for the nine days of his walk he escaped completely. He was never
many miles from home but he was, in effect, in a different world. The delight,
the exultation of this shines through his writing. It made a marvellous break
for him,stimulating and fascinating and exciting, perhaps the last time in his
life when the whole of his being - mind and body, heart and soul and will -
were working harmoniously and vigorously together, at full stretch.

Friday, 9 May 2014

When I started climbing in earnest in about 1987, two names
immediately sprang out of the new culture I was immersing myself in. Ron
Fawcett and Pete Livesey. Sure other names peppered the rock notes in the
climbing magazines...Moffatt, Moon, Dawes, Redhead et al...but despite the
latter names being well on their way to legendary status themselves, Fawcett
and Livesey were the real Big Time Charlies. As something of a rock innocent in those
days, I was not aware that Livesey had actually quit climbing some years before
and was now heavily into orienteering. I also had no idea that he had once been
a top drawer paddler-GB Olympic selectors had pencilled him in the GB Slalom
Olympic Team- a leading caver and champion fell runner.

All I knew back in those early days was that he had an
extremely entertaining column in Climber & Rambler magazine so I guessed that he must still in the business of putting up classic routes like Footless Crow,
Das Capital and Mossdale Trip. In fact, hadn’t I just watched him climb
Footless Crow with Chris Bonington in the Lakeland Rock series? It all seemed
perfectly natural; Pete was still an active top rock
athlete...wasn’t he?

With the publication of John Sheard and Mark Radtke’s
‘Fast and Free...Pete Livesey’ (Stories of a rock-climbing legend) those early misconceptions are answered and put into perspective. The complex
ebullient Yorkshireman is revealed in his ragged glory. Fanatical, laid back,
devious, accommodating, selfish, generous.
A mish-mash of contradictions who
nevertheless,was at heart a true climbing romantic who was drawn from the same traditional
mould as a Kirkus, Edwards, Brown or Whillans. It is this ethical
approach to climbing which makes his achievements all the more remarkable in
light of the technicality of the routes he was putting up in his pomp. This statement will raise some eyebrows given his reputation for ofttimes cutting corners when prepping a new route or occasionally being less than pure in his style. However,many of these accusations it appears, were without foundation and emanate from figures in the climbing world who had an axe to grind with Livesey. The occasional ethical lapse notwithstanding,Livesey remains still a much more interesting individual than some of our modern day
climbing automatons who are high on
ability and low on personality!

It is these contradictory elements of his character and that
mischievous element which continues to
attract people to the Livesey myth and which underpins the fascinating
collection of essays within the book. ‘Fast and Free’ might at first glance appear a
Pete Livesey biography. It isn’t. What it is,is a well conceived and skillfully assembled
collection of essays and articles relating to the man. Some of these pieces
were written by Livesey himself and includes classic essays like Travels with a Donkey, Jonathan
Livingstone Steelfingers and the ‘I feel rock’ articles which appeared in
magazines like Crags back in the seventies. The majority however, are written
by Pete’s closest friends, partners and climbing associates.

Whereas a conventional biography generally dissects it’s
subject from cradle to grave-or if you are a modern celebrity, from cradle to
early 20’s!- Fast and Free is purely concerned with Livesey the athlete.
Essentially the rock athlete although his activity in other areas, particularly
caving gets a mention. This leaves the field open to anyone who might feel
motivated to write the definitive PL biography in the future, but until then,
Fast and Free more than fulfils the authors ambition to bring Livesey, the
mythical Rock God into sharp focus.

One thing which struck me from those early Climber and
Rambler articles, was the fact that Pete was a fine natural writer. Not
inclined towards dense philosophical ramblings or purple prose, Pete told it as
it was, but more than often, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. One
C&R article which springs to mind, pondered whether or not, fist jamming up
a gritstone crack, you could become HIV positive if a previous ascendant was
HIV themselves? The theory being of course, the climber would have deposited
skin in the crack and the rasping qualities
of the rock could leave those following vulnerable. I’m sure climbing’s PC
elements must have grimaced at these ponderings and I still don’t know whether he was
being serious or if it was an early attempt at what we know today as trolling?
Whatever it was, I found this and other similarly surreal articles a lot more
entertaining than the often turgid writing on offer in the climbing mags in
those days. Livesey’s Climber &
Rambler column continued into the 90’s . Long after he had hung up his chalk
bag and dug out his running shoes.

The reasons Pete Livesey suddenly gave up climbing when at
the top of his game, has produced various theories. A popular take has been
‘the ego theory’. As a hugely competitive individual who was driven to excel in
all fields, the 37 year old rock athlete could not stand the thought of a new
hungry generation of climbers elbowing him aside in the eternal pursuit of the
cutting edge route. Not one to contemplate a gradual readjustment to a new
order where he was no longer ‘the Guvnor’, he exited stage left. Another
popular theory is that he was simply bored... been there, done that and bought the T shirt.
It’s left to his long time climbing partner and Fast and Free co-author, John
Sheard to explain the truth of the matter. And the truth is-as it usually is-somewhere between the two theories.

In addition, John Sheard offers
Livesey’s increasing disillusionment with the trend towards bolted sports climbing as an additional concern.
As a committed free climber who apart from establishing cutting edge routes,
liked nothing more than freeing bolted climbs, it must have been jarring to see
climbers like Ben Moon put up the provocatively named bolted route, ‘Statement
of Youth’ on Pen Trywyn in North Wales. In fact, co-author Mark Radtke mentions
a conversation he had with Livesey in his cafe in a closing chapter- ‘Legacy of
a Leader’. Livesey still with a proprietorial interest in climbing ethics
grumbled ‘Personally, I don’t see how a seventy foot climb with seven bolts in
it can be E7!’.

It was clear that as far as Livesey was concerned, the game
was up. Time to move on and take up a new outdoor activity. In this case,
orienteering. Before he hung up his rock boots he offered this valedictory
message which ended...

Sport climbing is
simply mastering moves. I haven’t the remotest inclination to join this band of
climbers nor have I anything against what they are doing.The BMC has made two
big mistakes. Firstly, getting involved with access, and increasingly playing
the role of policeman. Competition is the second. The BMC should take the
position that mountaineering is what they are about, and have nothing to do
with sports climbing. Other problems are on the horizon with access and
professionalism. Anyway....I don’t care-bye!’.

Pete Livesey died in 1998 aged just 54. It’s incredible to
mere mortals like myself, to think that Pete Livesey, the super-fit rock athlete who, on the face of it, was a picture
of health, should succumb to a ‘nasty little tumour’. If he was still alive
today he would be 70. An age when those who have spent a lifetime involved in
outdoor activities and who have come through unscathed by accident or disease,
are often still pounding the mountain tracks, breaching the waves or clinging
to rock faces. It’s interesting to ponder just what Pete Livesey might have
turned to in his eighth decade? Sailing, Paragliding, Sea Kayaking??? Whatever
it might have been, you just know he would have blown his fellow veterans out
of the water!

Friday, 2 May 2014

Though play as such is outside the range of good and bad,
the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it
means a testing of the player's prowess: his courage, tenacity, resources, and,
last but not least, his spiritual powers - his ‘fairness’; because, despite his
ardent desire to win, he must still stick to the rules of the game.The player
who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a ’spoilsport'. The
spoilsport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter
pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the
magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the
cheat than to the spoilsport. This is because the spoilsport shatters the
play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals there relativity and
fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with
others."

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens

Over the past few years monologues and dialogues on what have
come to be called climbing ethics have become a regular feature of climbers’
magazines. Tejada-Flores and Robbins have presented intriguing and
comprehensive descriptions of how the ethical machinery works or ought to work, and recently Robin Campbell has
offered a shorter decalogue. To be sure, Campbell and others have mentioned their
discomfort at talking about ethics in this respect - as if climbing had
dilemmas as weighty as those of the medical and legal professions. Recall,
though, that in a famous essay on conservation written no less than forty years
ago Aldo Leopold urged a further extension of ethical concepts: ethics dealt
with property and people at first, he said; but ethics ought to consider unimproved
land and the life-forms it supports. Clearly there is a sense in which many
young climbers agree with him and want to go a step further by protecting the
inanimate world of rock.

Ought one to apologise for adding to this literature?
If so, I offer two apologies, alternatives if you like. First, climbing and
mountaineering have been great fun and very satisfying. But the threats from
technology and population pressure in the past are nothing to the threats
looming in the immediate future. I find myself reluctant to agree with David
Roberts that the sport is probably doomed and may already be in its last throes.
But I am sure that if we want to enjoy these pastimes in roughly the same sorts
of ways as in the past, it would be wise to ascertain whether and how we ought
to protect them. Second, at some time or other I have flouted almost every rule
within an English climber’s reach. And yet, in the very act of committing each misdemeanour,
an utterly plausible excuse has been taking shape in my mind. So perhaps I
write with unusual authority and have
important new material to contribute?

lt makes sense to begin by scanning the entire field of
unethical behaviour on mountains, using ‘unethical’ in our contemporary sense.
Some readers may be upset at the inclusion of certain items in this list but
all these practices have been complained of by someone at some time. It might
be worth adding that less heinous offences, best referred to as breaches of
"climbing manners", can also be identified; some of the prototypes of
these peccadilloes were excellently dealt with by Winthrop Young in Mountain
Craft and more modern forms can be extrapolated. So we begin, obviously, with
the use of a power drill to get up a mountain and of a helicopter to get down;
with the use of light aeroplanes to look for or at prospective routes; with the
use of helicopters, aeroplanes, skidoos, jeeps,scramble bikes and so on, to get
men or material nearer to the climb than other or earlier visitors.Next we have
the use of pegs, bolts, nuts and slings to allow one to stand or hang in
comfort where might otherwise be difficult or impossible; and the abandoning of
this or other material on the mountain.

Then there is the whittling
away of climbs from below by the use of siege tactics; and the softening-up of
climbs from above by inspection or rehearsal by rappel or top-rope and by the
placing of useful or displacing of unhelpful material. Here we might add the
dissemination of detailed information about the mountain and its climbs in the
form of guidebooks,magazine articles, route descriptions, photos and topos. And
then comes the guiding on mountain excursions of people who want to go that way
but daren’t go there on their own; or of those who might just drift there by
chance but who don't understand what the mountain is for; or of people who don't admire the mountain and are scared stiff
anyway.All sorts of other complaints have been lodged about the presence on
mountains of people with uniforms, or with badges and certificates to prove it;
about the building of shelters and refuges; about the overdevelopment of rescue
facilities; about the use of rock shoes on easy climbs, and so on. But that
will do for a start.

Now it is clear to me that matters of right and wrong in climbing
involve actions with effects of two quite different categories. First, they involve
actions detrimental to the scene in its widest sense: conservation ethics,
called here environment ethics. Second, they involve actions that threaten the
accepted styles of climbing : game ethics, is called here competition ethics to
emphasise the dominant aspect of their nature. Some activities certainly lead
to both sorts of damage but it remains possible and important to separate the
categories and effects.We can list the main offences against environment ethics
briefly. First, there is damage to the biological life-bank of the cliff or
mountain, its plants and bird or animal life, Second, there is damage to the
rock itself, considered as something natural and admirable rather than as a
climbing problem that might need re-grading after rough treatment.Third, there
are the litter nuisances: bog paper on every ledge and bolts in every wall.
And, fourth, there is the erosion of the absolute mystery, dignity and privacy
of the mountain and the contamination of the local or native culture the
mountain stands behind and is coloured by.

Royal Robbins...ethical dude.

There are other problems as well. But in summary these are
the sorts of complaints that might be made by non-climbers who love the
mountain in an entirely platonic sense. The general type of offence is
disturbance. One could say a lot about these matters and if it were claimed
that they are outside the scope of climbing ethics the reply is, no, absolutely
not, the two areas are inseparable in many instances. But it is true that the
most heated arguments at present are about the ways in which climbs are carried
out. Competition ethics are based upon a number of factors or desiderata. There
is the need to exert oneself; there is the need to scare oneself; there is the
need to excel; and there is the example of archetypal climbs.

Beyond this,
competition ethics respond to change: advances in techniques; advances in
technology; increases in wealth and leisure; and the effects of population
pressures. ln mentioning the more important of these factors, Tejada-Flores’
indispensable description of 'climbing-games' has to be used as a model yet
again. One assumes that the reader is familiar with his terminology and ideas
and I use these freely here, without keeping bowing to the inventor. One notes
that he remarks that the climbing-game hierarchy isn't the only way of thinking
about climbing and no doubt he went through a number of alternatives. But an
obvious way of describing breaches of competition ethics is by saying that they
amount to the use of a handicap-system to assist the climber rather than to
defend the climb. The subversive purpose of this essay is to ask how much
competition ethics matter; but the question will have to wait a moment.

Having listed offenses against environment ethics we can now
look at the flouting of competition ethics. And here the cardinal sin is simply
the use of too much advantage, especially in support of a pre-emptive strike.
To this we can add the leaving of aid in place, a temptation to subsequent
parties. Over the past few years remarks about the use of excessive protection
have also been voiced from time to time. And then there is the creation of a
variation or traverse which, whilst giving a new climb, detracts from the
ambience of an existing line, a question of manners possibly. But the general
type of offence is that of reducing the personal handicap in relation to other
climbers likely to attempt the same route. It was remarked earlier that some
activities offend both ethics and some only one or the other. So, for example,
a pure bolt ascent might be held to flout environment ethics (by leaving litter
on the wall) and to flout competition ethics(by eliminating the personal
handicap). Gardening, on the other hand, violates environment ethics but
ratifies competition ethics because it leaves the climb in a more permanent
condition; whilst rehearsal by top-rope may be held to offend competition
ethics but does not threatenenvironment ethics in the least.

Excursus on sentiment. The great climbs can stand anancient
victory piton and the odd retreat pegs; even, perhaps, extended peg and bolt
ladders in certain situations depending mainly, rightly or wrongly, on how much
anxiety the situation arouses in the average climber undertaking the route.
Climbing is an art-form, engaging our feelings; and these mementoes, speaking
of the struggles of our predecessors. of success and failure, arouse emotions
in us. Even litter, then, may add to the impact of a climb. So here is the
related crunch question for frustrated ethicists. Does an unrecorded bolt
ascent of an otherwise unvisited wall breach environment ethics ? Or
competition ethics Or both? Or neither?

Another general observation on breaches of ethics centres of
the relative permanence of the effect. l began by mentioning the use of a power
drill to get up a mountain and of a helicopter to get down. Each of these bits
of assistance‘ constitutes a total breach of both ethics. But note that the
bolting is a relatively irreversible gesture against both ethics: the use of
the helicopter insults the environment ethic only until the echoes have died
away; whilst it damages the competition ethic for as long as we say it does.
Here's an odd difference then. Environment ethics can be breached temporarily,
with perfect repair, or permanently and irreparably, or something in between.
But how competition ethics are breached depends purely on what we say about the
matter. And we are influenced by factors that tend to make us change our minds
and construct new rules. One can observe the rules, or one can pretend to
observe them, or one can ignore them. And it is those who assume the last two
roles who interest me now: the cheat and the spoilsport.

ln climbing, a spoilsport is something more than just a
climber who takes an advantage one had not thought of oneself. A spoilsport
might be described as a cheat who admits, announces or boasts of his cheating;
or, retrospectively, a cheat who gets found out. But, to confuse matters,
British climbers use the expression ‘cheating’ in two ways. First, we joke that
we are cheating when we use more assistance than is usual; but by this
self-accusation we resign from the contest and clear ourselves. Second, we
cheat when we don't tell the truth about the aid we've used. The opportunities
for this on smaller crags have become less with population pressure. But even
on British cliffs there can be few leading climbers who have never found
themselves with a foot ‘caught in a sling’, whilst gardening holds.
And if any essential aid has been admitted to, dispensable aid is less likely
to be recorded. Something can be said in support of both cheat and spoilsport.
In defence of the cheat it has to be said that, in contrast to the disturbing
practices mentioned earlier, cheating stands alone; it does not really threaten
the game of climbing.

Hence the title of this article. In defence of the
spoilsport one can say what Durkheim said of other criminals. That his
existence is inevitable because he is the agent used to clarify and define the
edges of permissible behaviour. Perhaps both cheat and spoilsport might be
regarded as the guerillas of the mountaineering world, sabotaging the ethics
machine when its workings are causing absurd or undesirable effects. So here's
a health to Keith McCallum. Half cheat, half spoilsport, ably seconded by his
three fantasised companions (how real and individual were their personalities
to him Who was the best of the three? Where did J. S. Martin spend his August
holiday in 1967 ?) he blazed his way to glory through fifty dream climbs. One
has to give credit where it is due. In The Decay of Lying, Wilde speculates on the
character of the true liar - "his frank, fearless statements, his superb
irresponsibility” - and defines the really breathtaking lie: "Simply that
which is its own evidence".The genius of McCallum was of a very unusual,
very broad and visionary nature, easily damaged by the cynicism of the a world.

He was able not only to look at cliffs and write up fairly plausible
descriptions of impressive lines: but he was also willing and happy to attend
climbing club dinners as guest of honour and to make long and stupefying boring
speeches about his latest achievements and the state of the campaign. There's
conviction for you l One hopes that he has not been too distressed at the
response the uncovering of his initiatives drew. It would be nice to think that
he might one day return to the climbing scene with new ideas. I will assume now
that most of us agree that breaches of environment ethics are matters worth
serious thought, even if some alleged abuses need to be looked at rather sceptically.
But these are not the main subject of this article so only one question now
remains: do competition ethics matter? There are certainly points to be made
for and against them.

Clearly, competition ethics are essential for competitors.
They enable them to sort themselves out and to get into order of size, this
operation giving great happiness, anguish and excitement. Further, it is surely
the case that the better one climbs a route, the closer to the archetypal
style, the more pleasure one gets. For the most brilliant climbers, ethical
climbing is the only means by which a high enough level of tension can be
achieved and that goal becomes more elusive as technique and technology progress.
Finally, ethical climbing ensures that some problems are left unsolved; and
apart from the fact that this conserves a field of action for the experts of
tomorrow it is also claimed that there is an intrinsic virtue in modesty and
self-denial.

What, then, can be said against competition ethics? First,
that they should only apply to competitors. Might it not seem reasonable for a
man to ask to compete, not with other climbers - the collateral competition -
but only with the route and his own limits - the vertical competition: and
therefore to use whatever assistance he feels to be necessary ? This seems fair
enough to me. The joy of climbing includes elements other than the pleasure of
excelling, including, as claimed already, the catharsis of exertion and fear;
and that satisfaction is quite independent of one’s performance as compared
with the standards agree by groups.

lt might be said that unethical climbing is
simply a means of avoiding any such catharsis, but this is usually
true only for the scornful bystander in a particular situation; the unethical
climber is probably finding his unethical solution amply exciting. The
excellence of climbs, given a certain length of route, also depends more upon
such aesthetic factors as beauty ofmposition, rock architecture, setting and
view, than upon the actual method of achieving the hardest move: and on a
fairly long route the experience is not much affected whether the crux has been
climbed by layback, by jamming, or by standing in a nut sling. So that 60-year-olds,
I think, ought to insist upon their right to nut the crucial sections of routes
climbed free by 30-year-olds. The fact that this right is derided in Britain at
present is lamentable. We have reached the point at which sensitive climbers
are having to spend their holidays in Patagonia, where the wind is too loud to
permit prolonged discussions on ethics.

But now, unhappily, I reach the problem on which the theorists
break themselves: that posed by climbers who, in using extensive aid, reject
the competition ethic (since they're achieving a high enough level of tension
as it is) but who record their claims to first ascents. Is the First Ascents List
a competition ? Does it pre-suppose adherence to the competition ethic of a
particular time and place? Or is it no more than it calls itself, a historical
record ? At this point I find myself in a bit of a fix. I cannot help
commenting here on how irresistible the sexual metaphor appears to be. Don't
rape the mountains, says Campbell; leave a few monuments to Virginity, says
Robbins. It is a commonly held opinion nowadays that a false value has often
been placed upon virginity; and many readers, no doubt, share Dr. Comfort's
view that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition. Perhaps, then, the
metaphor is misleading And yet, in mountaineering the image of the undespoiled
seems to remain central and essential. Even those who imply that too much is
made of this legend of purity seem, by the very act of recording their
unethical ascents, to shake their own case. (Curious, too, to note how many
climbers have put on record the fact that they've made new routes without recording
them.) From this point several trains of thought depart and it's not possible
to catch all of them at once. So I content myself with saying that metaphors of
violation ought to be scrutinised carefully. In fact, I suspect that some interesting
understandings of the nature of the wilderness experience might result.

My own predilection, and my practice, is for doing new routes
as best one can; and, despite my title, for being reasonably honest about the
methods used. It doesn't perturb me in
the least if someone has made a new route by using more aid than I find to be
necessary on my subsequent ascent. If someone repeats my own climb with less
difficulty, I'm suitably impressed; with more, and I'm childishly delighted. I think
I know who made the first ascents of the Mont Aiguille, the Devil's Tower, Lost
Arrow and whatever, and I know how they succeeded. In a strange way the histories
of climbs made outside the competition ethic are often as interesting as those
of climbs made within it. So I think that the moderate climber ought to reject
the spectatorial role the é/ite have assigned to him.If I find a desperate
crack, accessible to me with two or three nuts and slings, I'm not going to
watch it for years until someone arrives who can finger up it. His aching fingers
will be his eventual reward as my dry throat was mine. His ethical ascent can
be used to underline the advance of the generations or simply my lack of skill.

But note that it might also be necessary to record the weather and perhaps
other variables; unless it is proposed to forbid the use of aid (or top-roping
or gardening en rappel) on new routes except in fine weather. Clearly, the
freeing of hard British rock-climbs is basically a fine-weather sport for gentlemen
of leisure who can wait for perfect conditions; whilst British rock-climbing itself is (surely?) an alI-weather
sport. (I must add here, in relation to the use of aid, that the problems of
speed and manners are often present. The objection to the use of siege tactics
surely stems in part from a response to the arrogance of blocking and claiming
a route in an area In which there is a population pressure problem. And when I
encourage old men and poor performers to use aid on difficult routes, I beg
them to consider whether they have a right to hold up a queue of climbers who
are genuinely longing to ascend that particular climb.

This article has changed shape a dozen times since first I
sketched it out. I had a hundred dazzling insights, which I could not
accommodate at this length, and. I met a hundred baffling problems, which I
could only evade or ignore. The general field of environment ethics, the
critical problem of people pollution, the intriguing area of the influence of
archetypes. and the matter of orders of preference in the use of advantage.
nave had to be passed by. The basic structure of the article to me to be a
reasonable way of looking; at the practices of climbers. But now I begin to
notice a suspicious resemblance between
the different pronouncements on the subject. each having a catch clause at the
end.

Tejada-Flores’ hierarchy of climbing-games allows an ultimate
judgement from the concept of good and bad style. Robbins proposes a
revolutionary First Ascent Principle and his benevolent ethic allows the
moderate climber to have as much fun as he likes; but then he announces a class
of actions called Outrages and these cannot be permitted. Campbell outlines
three restricted Categorical Imperatives and then comes up with a fourth, Love
the Mountain, which can be used to deal with any abuses he may notice. Some readers
may think my own suggestions disgustingly permissive; they have probably
forgotten my Environment Ethic, which enables me to forbid anything that makes
a mark or a noise. Perhaps, from the beginning, I ought to have distinguished
more rigorously between clean aid and dirty aid, nut and piton, as the
Americans keep doing. At any rate, I write in the certain knowledge that people
will let me know where I went wrong.

In the end, especially for those who climb
in public, it's a dialogue. It's a good thing that a climber should recognise his
capabilities. He should see the world as it is and understand, if he doesn't already,
that he may not be the best performer in the game. And it's a good thing also, provided
that the environment ethic isn't brutally offended, that a climber should feel free
to do his own thing and to reject the rules of others. I take J. E. B. Wright's
account of an incident during the German attempt in 1936 on Lliwedd’s then
unclimbed Central Gully Direct as a model for this dialogue: Stoeppler had been
warned about the Welsh weather and he had a tube fitted to his Bergen Sack
which took an umbrella. He was leading with the umbrella open keeping off the
rain. Teufel was leading me up Reade’s Crack. Along came five climbers. As they
arrived at the foot of Central Gully, bang, bang, went Stoeppler's hammer. The spokesman
of the five shouted, "What do you think you're doing?" Bang, bang,
went the hammer. This question was addressed several times, in a rising crescendo,
to Stoeppler and Schneider, neither of whom could speak English. The banging
and shouting went on alternately. Finally Stoeppler said to Schneider in German,
"if he shouts again, throw a rock at him."

The stone was not thrown but
the banging went on and the party of five continued on their way.’ There are
some extraordinarily puzzling questions in the field of climbing ethics and
it's rather amusing to see the young philistines torturing themselves with new
forms of the sorts of conundrums that have teased philosophers for centuries.But if matters of environmental damage aren't involved perhaps
the really crucifying dilemmas are for very small groups of people - the freakishly
talented, the disgustingly rich, and the clinically disturbed: but not for you
and me.

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To Hatch a Crow

Welcome to footless crow- Croeso i Bran di-droed

Footless Crow aims to provide the best in British outdoor writing in a unique 'blogazine' format. Offering new articles and republishing classic articles from the past which have been cherry picked from UK climbing/outdoor magazines and club journals. In this I am pleased to have received the support of many of the UK's top outdoor writers who see Footless Crow as a perfect medium to air unpublished works and see old works republished in a format which was inconceivable when they were first written!As a non commercial media,the blogazine acknowledges the contribution that publications like Loose Scree and The Angry Corrie have made in the world of mountain literature. Providing accessible quality writing through a low cost 'zine' format. Footless Crow hopes to emulate these publications by also providing content which is unashamedly traditional and celebrates the finest virtues of British mountaineering!

All published works and photographs have been fully approved by the authors who of course retain copyright. The usual rules and restrictions of copyright apply.Hope you enjoy the content which aims to provide a new extended article each week. If you have any comments or would like to contribute something which fits in with the 'Footless' concept then email me at ......

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* Since late 2011, the site has changed from a structured weekly article based format to a less formal arrangement which will see climbing and occasionally,eco news,art features and reviews appearing alongside articles.

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Why 'Footless Crow' ?

Footless Crow is a seminal rock climb in the Lake District of Northern England. It was the creation of legendary British climber Pete Livesey-1943-1998. Livesey was one of the new breed of climbers who eschewed the traditional laid back, fags and booze, ethic prevalent at the time and instead pursued a rigid training regime designed to increase his physical and mental attributes to the extent that he could push British climbing to new technical standards. In effect he was one of the first UK rock athletes.Footless Crow was a breakthrough climb which at the time was the hardest climb in the Lakes at E5-6c (US 5-13a). Currently E6-6c due to a flake peeling off.First climbed as an aid route by 50's Lakes legend, Paul Ross and then called -The Great Buttress-. Livesey's much rehearsed test piece was finally led on the 19th April,1974 to the wide eyed astonishment of the UK climbing community. One well known climber was said to have hung up his climbing boots after witnessing the ascent !The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow.

So now you know.

In 1976 I saw Ron Fawcett, rock-master since the middle Seventies, on the second ascent of Footless Crow in Borrowdale, then the hardest climb in the Lake District – 190 feet of overhanging rock without a resting-place. When his second called up, ‘What’s it like?’ he answered, ‘An ’orrendous place – Ah’m scared out of me wits,’ as he leaned way back on his fingertips, relaxing as comfortably as a sloth under a branch.